Professor Margaret Rayman

Professor Margaret Rayman has a doctorate in Inorganic Biochemistry from Somerville College, Oxford, and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Institute of Cancer Research and Imperial College. Since 2007, she has been Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Surrey where, in 1998, she set up, and now co-directs, the highly respected MSc Programme in Nutritional Medicine that aims to give clinicians an evidence-based understanding of the relationship between nutrition and disease. Her research, which includes a number of randomised controlled trials, centres on the importance of trace elements to human health with particular emphasis on selenium and iodine in populations with marginal selenium or iodine deficiency. She has published widely and has a number of highly cited publications in The Lancet. Her strong interest in how diet can be used to benefit health and reduce disease risk has led to the production of two previous books, Nutrition and Arthritis and Healthy Eating: The Prostate Care Cookbook, the latter of which has been translated into three languages. She has been researching diet and dementia since 2011. Vanessa Ridland is a registered dietitian who works in the NHS with patients in hospital and in the community, many of whom suffer from dementia. She feels passionately about empowering people to do everything they can to reduce their chances of developing this devastating disease. Katie Sharpe is also a registered dietitian working within the NHS, and has personal experience of helping to care for a close relative with dementia. Vanessa and Katie both have first class honours degrees in Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Surrey, where they researched diet and dementia in their final-year projects. Patsy Westcott is a well-established journalist and author specialising in health, nutrition, and ageing, who has recently added an MSc with Distinction in Nutritional Medicine from the University of Surrey to her achievements. She writes regularly for publications including Woman & Home and Saga.